Even as BP and US government officials continue to declare the oil spill over at Mississippi Canyon 252 and the cleanup operation an unqualified success, for the first time blood tests on sickened humans have shown signs of exposure to high levels of toxic chemicals related to crude oil and dispersants. Some of the individuals tested have not been on the beaches, were not involved in any cleanup operations or in the Gulf water -- they simply live along the Gulf Coast

A mile-long (1.6-kilometer), 100-foot-wide (30-meter) sheen of oil was sighted near the burning Vermilion 380 platform, which stands in less than 400 feet of water, the Coast Guard said earlier today, citing a report from Houston-based Mariner.

When you talk about British Petroleum you have to talk about the Bride of Dracula, the original noxious, bat cave, the Queen of England, also the head of the Black Nobility; or close enough. My favorite picture of this slithering reptile is when she goes around on Christmas Day or New Years and dispenses season’s greetings to the junkies and homeless on the street. After a heartfelt, “Merry Christmas!” and a brisk handshake, it’s on to the next affair of state, which usually involves a senior cabinet member porking his chauffeur.

The Earl of Stirling makes it clear that the ingrained spin of the West is not going to help the ever worsening Oil Spill, he points to a collapse of the Gulf Stream and the extreme weather patterns developing. This is the first part of a web conference interview.

For weeks, Attorney Stuart Smith and researchers Dr. William Sawyer and Marco Kaltofen have been providing evidence contrary to the federal government's assertions that the oil from the BP DEEPWATER HORIZON catastrophe is gone and that seafood from oil-impacted waters are not compromised.

"We are thrilled about this new resource," said Marylee Orr, Executive Director, LEAN. "This website allows anyone interested to see what chemicals were found, where they were found, and how much was found. We feel the public has the right to this information."

Test The Rain Project originated out of concern due to the dispersants being used in the BP gulf oil spill. The EPA along with the Coast Guard provided little oversight over the decisions being made by BP. It was estimated that 1.8 million gallons of dispersant, mainly corexit 9500, had been sprayed into the gulf. Many conflicting reports have come out of the gulf area concerning all aspects of the spill.

Attempting to understand the environmental and health risk associated with the gulf oil spill only raised more unanswered questions. Finding those answers from BP or other Governmental agencies only raised a vale over the spill.

Perhaps the British Petroleum/Nalco event was the wakeup call we needed in order to look more closely at untouchable corporations that began running the whole world 100 years ago. This is a paper about corporate communism, which is otherwise known as "monopolies" that are now rampant in the US. Monopolies always engage in conspiracy, and their first goal is to conspire to eliminate their competition and choices, establish control over prices and the masses by an elite few. The April 20, 2010, BP oil catastrophe in America's Gulf can be described as a monumental corporate conspiracy. BP was permitted by cronies to dig a hole to China off Louisiana's shores without safety measures or concern for the Gulf's marine ecosystem.

NEW ORLEANS, La. – A mile-long oil sheen spread Thursday from an offshore petroleum platform burning in the Gulf of Mexico off Lousiana, west of the site of BP's massive spill.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Coklough said the sheen, about 100 feet wide, was spotted near the platform owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy Inc.

He said Mariner had deployed three firefighting vessels to the site and one already was in place fighting the blaze.

The Coast Guard says no one was killed in the explosion and fire, which was reported by a commercial helicopter flying over the site around 9 a.m. CDT. All 13 people aboard the rig were rescued as they floated in the nearby water in survival outfits called gumby suits.

Down a winding road that hugs the water of Bayou La Batre in southern Alabama, out-of-work shrimp boats float quietly along the piers. Near the end of the road, the Alabama state dock houses a dozen twin-engine, steel-hulled boats that BP has under contract to do oil cleanup work. Police cars guard the entrance.

Across the harbor at the end of the public pier, four large white plastic containers sit on pallets labeled: "Nalco Corexit EC9005A. Oil Spill dispersant. Caution: may cause irritation with prolonged contact…do not get in eyes, on skin, on clothing...." Some of the containers have black hand-written letters on the back that says "oil waste water" or "clean water." Another container sits further away on a pallet by itself, with the same warning label but clean.

NEW ORLEANS — The cap that ended BP's three-month oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico was set to come off Thursday as a prelude to raising a massive, failed piece of equipment and preparing for a final seal on the broken seafloor well.

Engineers and the government were not expecting crude to break out again when the cap is lifted, but the government wasn't offering any guarantees and oil collection vessels were set to be on standby on the surface just in case.

Despite persistent denials from BP last week, thousands of pounds of weathered oil is being pulled from under the surface of Pensacola Bay every day.

During more than a dozen interviews last week, BP officials and spokespeople for a number of government agencies working on the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill response denied knowledge of oil in the bay.

Even as they spoke, however, Escambia County officials and local fishermen were reporting finding weathered oil, as they've been doing for weeks. BP's own crews were hand-scooping it up, and a submerged-oil team from BP's Deepwater Horizon Response Incident Command Post in Mobile was investigating.

Project Gulf Impact has released a new video that shows the dispersant/oil plumes that we reported on a little under a week ago. Some of the dispersant was still in powder form, an indication that it was freshly sprayed!

State Director of Coastal Activities Garret Graves said… “We don’t want to pull up all the stakes and send all the skimmers away and everything else only to have a storm come through and stir up the plumes, and next thing we know, we’re covered in oil again.”

The rampant use of toxic dispersants, out-of-state private contractors being brought in to spray them and US Coast Guard complicity are common stories now in the four states most affected by BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

While the government denies these reports and even denies using military aircraft to spray dispersants altogether there is plenty of evidence proving they are lying.

I recently wrote that the State of Alabama has filed charges against BP and Transocean for covering up the BP Gulf Oil spill and for using dangerous toxic dispersants that have destroyed the environment.

Now if we can only get other states to follow suit AND add a few more defendants to the list like the cronies in the Government who are allowing this to happen.

Lumpy, degraded oil collected in the Mississippi Sound has tested positive for several of the main ingredients in the Corexit dispersant used in connection with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, according to scientists working for a New Orleans-based lawyer.

Officials with the federal government and BP PLC have maintained throughout the oil spill that no dispersant products have been used near shorelines in Alabama or Mississippi.

[T]o follow the fallout from the largest such disaster in U.S. history… [t]he AP has appointed Harry Weber, Brian Skoloff and Pat Semansky to three new positions covering the spill and its aftermath. According to a staff memo sent Monday…

“Our heads are still swimming,” stated Barbara Schebler of Homosassa, Florida, who received word last Friday that test results on the water from her family’s swimming pool showed 50.3 ppm of 2-butoxyethanol, a marker for the dispersant Corexit 9527A used to break up and sink BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

The problems began for the Scheblers a few weeks after the April 20 blow-out. “Our first clue were rashes we both got early in May. Both my husband and I couldn’t get rid of the rashes and had to get cream from our doctor,” Schebler noted, “I never had a rash in my life.”

The mutagenic achievement of certain chemical agents was first discovered in the former USSR. In 1946, the mutagenic properties of formaldehyde and mustard gas were discovered. Since then, many hundreds of chemical mutagens have been established.

It’s only in microorganisms (such as bacteria and viruses) that some chemical mutagens can drastically increase the mutation rate of certain genes over the mutation rate of the other genes. Chemical mutagens are responsible for a greater number of mutations than are physical mutagens.

“Our heads are still swimming,” stated Barbara Schebler of Homosassa, Florida, who received word last Friday that test results on the water from her family’s swimming pool showed 50.3 ppm of 2-butoxyethanol, a marker for the dispersant Corexit 9527A used to break up and sink BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

The problems began for the Scheblers a few weeks after the April 20 blow-out. “Our first clue were rashes we both got early in May. Both my husband and I couldn’t get rid of the rashes and had to get cream from our doctor,” Schebler noted, “I never had a rash in my life.”

Then, on “July [23], my husband Warren mowed the lawn. It was hot so he got in the pool to cool off afterward. That afternoon he had severe diarrhea and very dark urine. This lasted about 2 days,” she revealed.

BP has announced it will deploy an armada of unmanned drone boats – called Wave Gliders – to monitor the BP Gulf Oil Spill.

These unmanned marine robots run completely off of wave action and solar power and will be deployed for years at a time to monitor water quality, marine mammal vocalizations and weather and water temperature data.

President Barack Obama pledged on Sunday to finish restoring the Gulf Coast area hit by Hurricane Katrina, five years after the storm ravaged the region and hurt the credibility of his Republican predecessor.

Webmaster's Commentary:

And there is the motive for all this focus on Katrina the last week, to get Obama off of the hook for the oil disaster by reminding everyone how bad Bush screwed the gulf.

Well, BOTH Presidents @#%$ed up. Bush is gone. Obama is still here wrecking the place.

Stopping the press is exactly what the establishment has done in regards to the BP oil disaster (or should I say military operation) The media blackout is not even the half of it. The more we dig deeper into this situation the scarier it actually gets. The true scope and scale of this massive military operation is hard to digest. There are clearly some red flags triggering questions that must be raised, and this is where is gets strange.

Nine days after the apparent Deepwater accident, Obama announced that the oil spill would become a Dept. of Defense operation and that the Department of the Interior had dispatched SWAT teams to the Gulf to inspect all platforms and rigs.

On August 19, Truthout accompanied two commercial fishermen from Mississippi on a trip into the Mississippi Sound in order to test for the presence of submerged oil. Laboratory test results from samples taken on that trip show extremely high concentrations of oil in the Mississippi Sound.

A boat explosion in Buras has left several people injured, including a former Plaquemines Parish councilman.

Webmaster's Commentary:

BP is leaving a suspicious trial of 'connected' bodies. Strange??? You decide.
Wasn't there a BP contractor who was hit, and killed, by a car? Matt Simmons and his heart attack... Two BP contractors 'suddenly' commit suicide... And, of course, Alaskan X Senator Ted Stevens (with BP ties) and his strange plane crash. Any more??

“Blue Flu” infecting people along the Gulf of Mexico, other southern states?

Some people are calling it the BP Flu. But it is commonly being called the Blue Flu, because the alleged symptoms include blue lips and skin; and it’s scaring the hell out of people all around the Gulf area –from Texas to Florida.

This Blue Flu is separate from people experiencing something called TILT, or “Toxic-Induced Loss of Tolerance.” TILT is something that hit some of the folks who had been working on the massive cleanup surrounding the oil spill. Symptoms from TILT include eyes and skin being irritated, headaches and dizzines.

People with TILT are typically those who were in the immediate area of the spill, mostly those directly involved with the cleanup. Those suffering from Blue Flu are an entirely different matter. These are people who were not in direct contact with the spill, or the cleanup chemicals. They simply live in the south, near the Gulf.

Symptoms include swollen glands, notably in the neck, fever, vomiting, headache, bluish lip color, numbness in fingers and toes. The most alarming symptom being reported is “severe symptomatic cyanosis.” This is the entire body turning blue, a discoloration of the skin.

The House voted 420 to 1 to give the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico full subpoena power.

The Senate blocked it.

No subpoena powers. No real investigation.

---Comment---

Even if the President had subpoena power to investigate BP oil, would he even use it? I have a doubt. -- kdtroxel

“Free enterprise ended in the United States a good many years ago. Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and drive out the small entrepreneur. In their conglomerate forms, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the legitimacy of the state.” – Gore Vidal

Now if we can only get other states to follow suit AND add a few more defendants to the list like the cronies in the Government who are allowing this to happen.

WKRG News 5 in Alabama reports that the Attorney General of Alabama has filed charges against BP and Transocean for covering up the BP Gulf Oil Spill and using a dangerous and highly toxic choice of chemical dispersants among other things.

Everyday it seems we get more and more proof that oil and dispersant are still poisoning the Gulf of Mexico. Project Gulf Impact recently took their second boat trip in the last week. The first trip brought us photos of freshly sprayed dispersant, totally destroying the myth that this disaster is reaching its end.

Large oil and dispersant plumes still linger, continually poisoning and destroying our precious oceans. Internal BP documents show that there were not one but TWO wells, raising the possibility that the ROV cameras may have never been placed near the real leak.

Well, I haven’t got any idea who Katy Perry is but I saw a link on Newsweek, which I ran into after reading a link to Newsweek from MSNBC.com about how the seafood in The Gulf of Mexico is safer and tastier than the seafood in any body of water in the world; more or less and it was about her dirty mind. From the picture, I was interested enough to wonder what mind they were talking about, with her ice cream cone licking, children’s fairytale set, which it proved to be when I clicked it and it started playing.

In its national PR blitz to buff up its image, the oil giant has loudly been boasting that it has hired devastated, out-of-work local people to handle the clean-up. Many have been hired, but the people themselves say not nearly enough. The Nation magazine now reports a big reason for the shortfall — BP has been using inmates to do much of the shoveling and scooping to remove oil from Louisiana beaches.

The next day at a town hall meeting in Buras, LA, BP Mobile Incident Commander Keith Seilhan was asked about the use of chemical dispersants. “We are not using dispersants and haven’t been for some time,” he said.

But when asked whether contractors who operate in state waters could be, he said he could not be certain.

A father jokingly throws sand at his little boy who laughs while dodging it. This, against a background of oil rigs and platforms looming in the Gulf. In the foreground, littering the beach, are tar balls.

We stroll through the area, eyeing even more tar balls that bob lazily underwater, amidst sand ripples in the shallows…

Today, Project Gulf Impact is out on the waters in and around Orange Beach Alabama. What they have found is exactly the opposite of what BP and the federal government have told the American people. Not only did they find oil but they apparently found what looks to be freshly sprayed dispersant, still in powder form.

Why is this toxic dispersant still being sprayed? Warnings from scientists and independent journalists have indicated that Corexit could effect the gulf for at least twenty years.

“Dead fish in Alabama – cells ruptured with lots of corexit and dispersed oil all around….The oil is thick, dispersant already trying to hide it, with dead catfish in plumes.”

[Cotton Bayou, Ala. resident] Margaret Long… first got suspicious when she saw something in the water she had never seen before. She even took photographs, “Some times it’s about the size of a half dollar. Some times it streams along and its like floating sand.”

She got samples and sent them to chemist Bob Naman in Mobile whose tests results show 13.3 ppm of the chemical dispersant corexit. …

“It concerns me,” says Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon. …

“There is an anger yes, very much an anger. I fear what the long term affects are going to be.” Her only question now is what will be done about it.

While the initial samples did not show up the droplets [of an oily, orange substance in blue crab larvae], more definitive answers will take months, Lamkin says… adding that NOAA sends its samples to a laboratory in Poland for separation. “It will be some months before we know.” …

TransOcean Marianas first drilled at Well A from 7 Oct till 9 Nov 2009. On 28th Oct 2009 Tony Hayward (CEO of BP) disposed 220,000 shares on the same day the Marianas reported some serious well problems which lasted till 31 Oct 2009. Ten (10) days later (on 9 Nov 2009) the well was officially abandoned due to damages sustained from Hurricane Ida. The total depth drilled was only 4,023ft (1,226m) below mud line (bml). On 17th Nov 2009, Byron E Grote another BP Director sold 150,000 of his BP share holding.

On 3rd Feb 2010 the Deepwater Horizon (owned and operated by TransOcean) was directed to drill Well A, by re-entering the previously abandoned well. BP has maintained that this was the only well drilled in February till the blowout on 20 April 2010. The well apparently took a total of 10.5 weeks to reach the targeted reservoir at 18,000 ft bml around 16 April; 6.5 weeks longer than expected. The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) caught fire in a blowout 4 days later (on 20 April 2010) which resulted in the worst ever mega-oil spill disaster experienced during peace time.

Recently, frustrated scientists presented evidence that millions of Gulf area residents were poisoned by the BP Gulf disaster. Worse, they believe that millions more could be exposed to long term poisoning.

Yet other than those worried scientists few seemed to care.

Now more frightening evidence has emerged: areas of the Gulf Coast may have been saturated with high levels of benzene, hydrogen sulfide and radioactive hydrocarbon effluents--three deadly substances that can cause disease and death years after the initial exposures.

----Addendum----

"Benzene and Other Toxic Solvents and Chemicals" - Benzene is a known human carcinogen. Work-related exposure to benzene has been linked to the development of blood cancers and blood disorders. Examples of blood diseases that may be caused by occupational benzene exposure include acute myelogenous leukemia, chronic myelogenous leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome (which can progress into acute myelogenous leukemia over time), aplastic anemia, acute lymphocytic leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. Certain other toxic solvents and chemicals may also be a cause of blood cancers and disorders. Link: http://www.leukemiainfocenter.com/Benzene_Toxicity.html

Radioactivity exposure: air, water, food supply
“Radioactive Hydrocarbon Effluent ...from oil and which possesses higher levels of radium isotopes. The deeper the petroleum reserves, the more likely the reservoirs of oil and methane in those geological formations will contain uranium, thorium or radium. Given the elevated levels of radioactivity at the source, the level of radioactivity associated with the hydrocarbon effluent coming out of the well will inevitably be impacted. Radium isotopes have inherent health risks that ought to be identified and properly disseminated. The concerned resident of the Gulf Coast may want to initiate him/herself in the area of health impacts due to long-term exposure to low grade radioactivity. Of course, the seafood, the waters and the beaches all provide different vehicles for such contamination to take place, each with varying consequences.'

Oil that has resisted dispersion and evaporation likely will “remain potentially harmful for decades,” MacDonald said at the congressional hearing, adding: “I expect the hydrocarbon imprint of the BP discharge will be detectable in the marine environment for the rest of my life.”

For months, US media reports distorted and lied about its severity, running cover for BP and the Obama administration, now practically avoiding the crisis altogether as it worsens. An August 20 Inter Press Service report is revealing, quoting Biloxi, MS fisherman Danny Ross saying hypoxia (depleted oxygen) is driving horseshoe crabs, stingrays, flounder, dolphins, and other sea life "out of the water" to escape. Another area fisherman, David Wallis said he's "seen crabs crawling out of the water in the middle of the day."

A contractor to BP testified Tuesday that he warned BP that it risked gas leaks in the Macondo well if it cut back on stabilizers for the pipe going down the hole. The warning, he told the Coast Guard-led inquiry into the disaster, was sent via e-mails to BP engineers, including one who refused to testify on Tuesday.

Jesse Gagliano, a technical advisor for Halliburton, which was contracted to cement the well, testified that two days before the explosion he sent BP a computer model showing severe risk of gas flowing into the cemented well if it used fewer than seven "centralizers" at different depths of the pipe.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Corporations are by definition entities without conscience.
; this is why laws are needed to protect the public from corporations, which have as their only reason for being profit.

That being said, Obama had well over a year to correct the deficiencies of the Minerals Management Service, and did absolutely nothing to make that happen.

The consequences of this disaster will have an aftermath that will linger decades from now, in terms of destroying both the ecosystem and the lives of those people whose families had depended on the Golf coast for their living for generations.

“How did you do out there?” Craig [a charter fishing captain and guide] asks him. “Nothing. Nothing at all,” the despondent fisherman replies. “How much do you usually catch?” Craig asks. “Hundreds of pounds, sometimes a thousand pounds,” comes the reply.

Three vanishing acts are being played out in the Gulf: the disappearing of the oil from the ocean surface by Corexit, the disappearing of the story by the media blockade, and the disappearing from view of the shadowy private contractors who are making a mint helping BP and the Coast Guard keep a cover on the clean-up. This triple vanishing trick, collectively choreographed by BP and sundry federal agencies, culminated on August 4th in a report released by NOAA that claimed 75% of the oil spill had been captured, burned, evaporated or broken down. The White House hailed the report as something to celebrate. Energy advisor Carol Browne announced: "the vast majority of the oil is gone."

Doug Alsem said he went to work… as part of BP’s cleanup program after the oil spill dried up business at his marine construction company in Belle Chasse, La. … “We were out there working and the lady called up … and said not to come back.. Some of these guys are just scratching their heads. They don’t know what they’re going to do.” …

At the Waterfront Rescue Mission’s homeless shelter in Pensacola, Fla., the spike started about two months ago and shows no sign of letting up. The shelter normally sees fewer occupants during the summer, but this year all 37 beds are full, along with 21 mats normally reserved for severe weather.

Since the blowout BP has stonewalled congress about the integrity of the well and cracks in sea floor.

Immediately after BP capped the well the pressure was far short of target BP and the Government set for an “intact well” and as time passed the pressure still failed to rise significantly indicating the well integrity test failed.

Soon afterward the ROV’s spotted a new leak on the BOP.

The feds then ignored the warning signs, which included multiple leaks on the BOP and the sea bed. and allowed the well to remain shut in even though it risked an uncontrolled underground blowout and came up with a fantasy story about well depletion being the cause of the low pressure in the well.

Then came the news that 40 feet of the relief well collapsed followed by the discovery of a new methane leak found coming from the base of the BOP just inches from the well.

The government then allowed BP to fill the well with mud during the static kill operation and declared that the well was dead even though the well continued to leak.

As the well continued to leak the Government then gave BP the authorization to fill the production casing with cement even though there was a risk that the cement would not cure properly because of the leaks.

That was followed by an increase of oil and methane hydrate leaks popping up all over the sea floor after which BP started filtering the video feeds to hide the leaks.

Then 48 hours after cementing the well the leaks coming from the sea floor continued and became worse as BP started to degrade the quality of the video feeds and was caught once again filtering the video to hide oil and methane leaks from the cracks on the sea floor.

Then oil industry experts came forward and declared that the entire static kill operation failed and has made it even harder for BP to seal the well.

Finally, almost out of the blue, BP lowered a tool to the well flush it of hydrocarbons in a test that was supposed to run for 48 hours but for some unexplained reason was interrupted last light.

That leads us up to today when the federal government has postponed the relief wells until September while admitting that a collapse in the rock formation and not the cement it pumped into the well may be preventing the flow of oil.

Meanwhile the leaks on the sea floor continue and we have even seen a massive tornado form on the sea floor and a crater that was apparently created from it.

All of these events combined with BK Lim’s analysis and Dr. Bea’s revelations tell us that we have some massive fractures on the sea floor that are leaking all over the place and while the BP and the Feds have declared mission accomplished in reality this is far from over.

Thousands of fish have turned up dead at the mouth of Mississippi River, prompting authorities to check whether oil was the cause of mass death, local media reports said Monday.

The fish were found Sunday floating on the surface of the water and collected in booms that had been deployed to contain oil that leaked from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Times-Picayune reported.

"By our estimates there were thousands, and I'm talking about 5,000 to 15,000 dead fish," St Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro was quoted as saying in a statement.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Excuse me, but isn't this the same Gulf President Obama just assured the American people was clean, safe, and free from pollutants, and that the seafood from this region was safe to eat?!?

Honestly, the whole world knows when this man is lying: he opens his mouth...and words come out of it!!!!!!

Louisiana State University fish toxicologist Kevin Kleinow has found that the dispersants used in the Gulf increase the amount of toxins the fish absorb and then, once exposed, makes it harder for the fish to get rid of the toxins through normal biological processes.

Then, hungry for dramatic TV footage to support Barack Obama's announcement, that the BP – or, as he preferred, 'British Petroleum' – oil spill was 'the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced', news networks descended on their town. They quickly found what they were looking for: shocking images of Pensacola's famously white beaches thickly-coated with sticky, black crude oil and apparently beyond salvation. The apocalyptic message was reinforced in doom-laden interviews with locals. 'It's damn near biblical. This place is done for!' lamented 36-year-old Kevin Reed, whose family have swum and sunbathed in the area for generations. His anguish was understandable. Yet, as I saw this week, nothing could be further from the truth.

The U.S. state of Mississippi recently reopened all of its fishing areas. The problem is that commercial shrimpers refuse to trawl because they fear the toxicity of the waters and marine life due to the BP oil disaster.

The Environmental Protection Agency informed BP officials late Wednesday that the company has 24 hours to choose a less-toxic form of chemical dispersants to break up its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to government sources familiar with the decision, and must apply the new form of dispersants within 72 hours of submitting the list of alternatives.

The move is significant, because it suggests federal officials are now concerned that the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants could pose a significant threat to the Gulf of Mexico's marine life. BP has been using two forms of dispersants, Corexit 9500A and Corexit 9527A, and so far has applied 600,000 gallons on the surface and 55,000 underwater.

The recent discovery of trace amounts of oil in blue crab larvae has left experts forecasting dire news for the Gulf ecosystem. It’s evidence that the oil from the spill loosed from the Deepwater Horizon explosion has already begun working its way up the food chain — where it could be fatal to animals who ingest it.

Danny Ross, a commercial fisherman from Biloxi… said he has watched horseshoe crabs trying to crawl out of the water, and other marine life like stingrays and flounder trying to escape the water as well. He believes this is because the water is hypoxic. …

David Wallis, another fisherman from Biloxi… [said] “I’ve seen crabs crawling out of the water in the middle of the day. This is going to be affecting us far into the future.”

This has been a common occurrence since BP started spilling oil into the Gulf.

The scene is post-apocalyptic. Under a grey sky, two families play in the surf just off the beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana. To get to the beach, we walk past a red, plastic barrier fence that until very recently was there to keep people away from the oil-soaked area. Now, there are a few openings that beach goers can use. The fence is left largely intact, I presume, for when they will need to close the beach again when the next invasion of BP’s oil occurs.

Since July, “Heavy sheen and persistent clouds of dingy brown water washing up in pockets” from the Perdido Pass near Pensacola, Florida to Mississippi is staining the white sand. A recent snorkeling trip along Fort Morgan found the bottom just offshore covered in a fine layer of brown residue,” Raines reports.

And again, looking at this video of the oil flowing out of the destroyed well, from before July 15th, it is possible to read the X coordinate of the ROV and confirm we were then being shown well "B", whereas the videos of the capped well are being taken at the earlier abandoned well "A".

As you might have heard, scientists are finding gigantic under oil plumes from the BP spill, including one that is more than 22 miles long, more than a mile wide and 650 feet deep.

On Thursday, Dr. Ian MacDonald and and Dr. Lisa Suatoni testified to a Congressional subcommittee that the oil will stay toxic, and will not degrade much further, for decades. MacDonald is an expert in deep-ocean extreme communities including natural hydrocarbon seeps, gas hydrates, and mud volcano systems, a former long-time NOAA scientist, and a professor of Biological Oceanography at Florida State University. Suatoni has a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale, and is Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council's Oceans Program.

Webmaster's Commentary:

BP is working overtime to limit its liability here, and the Federal Government is letting them get away with it!

It's not enough that the White House is moving to lock up hundreds of millions of acres of land in the name of environmental protection. The Obama administration's neon green radicals are also training their sights on the deep blue seas. The president's grabby-handed bureaucrats have been empowered through executive order to seize unprecedented control from states and localities over "conservation, economic activity, user conflict and sustainable use of the ocean, our coasts and the Great Lakes."_

The US government, and even President Obama himself, have said that Gulf seafood is safe to eat in the wake of the massive BP oil spill.

But an admission from the federal government that it hasn't been testing Gulf seafood for toxic heavy metals, and news that fishermen are being forced to sign waivers making them liable for toxins in their catch, suggest not everyone is convinced of the safety of Gulf seafood.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Could the US government and BP possibly punish the victims - and the American people - any more ruthlessly than make fisherman sign waivers of responsibility for the toxicity of the seafood, and let that seafood into the American food chain?!?

On Thursday, Dr. Ian MacDonald and and Dr. Lisa Suatoni testified to a Congressional subcommittee that the oil will stay toxic, and will not degrade much further, for decades. MacDonald is an expert in deep-ocean extreme communities including natural hydrocarbon seeps, gas hydrates, and mud volcano systems, a former long-time NOAA scientist, and a professor of Biological Oceanography at Florida State University. Suatoni has a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale, and is Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council's Oceans Program.

Residents living in DeSoto Landing say they've never seen this black mess before. They believe the stained sand covering their beautiful white beach is a sign the oil spill is far from over. "I thought maybe it was a small stretch but I started looking east and west and it went on forever."

The U.S. state of Mississippi recently reopened all of its fishing areas. The problem is that commercial shrimpers refuse to trawl because they fear the toxicity of the waters and marine life due to the BP oil disaster.

"We come out and catch all our Mississippi oysters right here," James "Catfish" Miller, a commercial shrimper in Mississippi, told IPS. Pointing to the area in the Mississippi Sound from his shrimp boat, he added, "It's the only place in Mississippi to catch oysters, and there is oil and dispersants all over the top of it."

"In other words, the geology beneath the seafloor is so fractured, with soft and unstable salt formations, that we may never be able to fully kill the well even with relief wells. Instead, the loss of containment of the oil reservoir caused by the drilling accident could cause oil to leak out through seeps for years to come. See this and this for further background."

It seems that we are witnessing the death of our planet right before our very eyes. The extreme weather, Gulf oil disaster and use of deadly dispersants, to decades of agrichemical and synthetic medicines leeching into water ways, and general human pollution resulting in having to now map the North Atlantic Garbage Patch (not to be confused with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) -- has resulted in major breaches to our interdependent life system.

Here are a few recently-reported disturbing indicators that our life support system may be nearing critical condition:

Feds admit they are NOT testing fish in the oiled areas of the gulf, and now Fisherman are being told that they must accept all legal liability fore the safety of the fish they catch and sell. THIS is what Fascism is all about; government (the US) and corporations (BP) working together against the general population (YOU)!

A flower shop in Florida that saw a drop-off in weddings this summer is probably out of luck. So is a restaurant in Idaho that had to switch seafood suppliers. A hardware store on the Mississippi coast may be left out, too.

The latest guidelines for BP's $20 billion victims compensation fund say the nearer you are geographically to the oil spill and the more closely you depend on the Gulf of Mexico's natural resources, the better chance you have of getting a share of the money.

Testing the Water is a grassroots movement of concerned citizens is dedicated to ascertaining the true magnitude of health risks associated with exposure to oil and chemical dispersants in the Gulf waters through independent laboratory testing. Our citizen's coalition supports the advocation of the Precautionary Principle when it comes to Environmental Protection & Safety.

The actual existence of the plume was in some doubt until a team of researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution provided incontrovertible proof. The researchers managed to catch up with the plume about three miles southwest of the original blowout location, then used a remote-controlled submarine and an underwater spectrometer to figure out its dimensions. They were able to study the plume for ten days in June before Hurricane Alex forced them from the area. It's still not known whether this was the only plume or whether others formed, and the team said at a press conference today that they would be unwilling to commit themselves either way on that point.

Scientists have detected an underwater plume of oil the size of Manhattan, according to the Wall Street Journal. The findings, published yesterday, further undermine the Obama administration’s optimistic view that most of the Deepwater Horizon oil has already disappeared.

Webmaster's Commentary:

"Optimistic view?" It was a flat out @#%ing LIE for the sake of the November elections! Look at this story. Obama has declared the crisis fixed by fiat! Nothing more to see here, people; move along and don't forget to vote Democratic in November!" -- Official White Horse Souse

Many scientists had predicted that oil-eating bacteria—already common in the Gulf due to natural oil seeps—would process much of the crude leaked from BP's Deepwater Horizon wellhead, which was capped July 15. (Read more about how nature is fighting the oil spill.)

But new evidence shows that a 22-mile-long (35-kilometer-long), 650-foot-high (200-meter-high) pocket of oil has persisted for months at depths of 3,600 feet (1,100 meters), according to a team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts.

Weeks after the U.S. government claimed that the "vast majority" of oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill has been taken care of, oil has possibly been found deep on the Gulf seafloor, scientists announced this week.

The latest estimate, writes Randy Rieland at environmental hub Grist, is that "only 10 percent of the oil that gushed out of the Deepwater Horizon well was 'actually removed from the ocean.'" That's one of the more "pessimistic" estimates thus far, and comes from an oceanographer at Florida State University. It's also "wildly at odds with what the feds have been saying--that as much as 75 of the oil is gone."

Earlier this week Commerce Secretary Gary Locke descended on Louisiana to announce a $30.7 million grant for a coastal restoration project near Port Fourchon. He called the funding a sign of the “administration’s commitment to help the Gulf Coast’s economy and environment recover in the wake of the BP oil spill.”

There was just one problem — funding for the project was approved months before the oil spill. And according to the state agency in charge of coastal restoration, there was no action even necessary by the Department of Commerce for the project to progress.

BP’s attempts to spin the disaster into an art form through the mass media and paid advertisement are all part of BP’s Charade. The failing Static Kill on the “wrongly” capped well (Macondo A) is just one of the “broken steps”. The return of BP Zombie Well by Fintan Dunne aptly described the multiple failures in trying to kill the wild well. Is there more to it? Did BP drill one or two wells? Apparently the wells were drilled outside their approved period of exploration. Despite what it seems Well B was not drilled at its proposed location. Instead after plugging well A, DWH drilled on an unreported location which blew on 20th April 2010. Were regulations contravened?

The company that owned the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico is accusing BP of withholding critical evidence needed to investigate the cause of the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, according to a confidential document obtained by The Associated Press. BP called the claims a publicity stunt.

The new complaint by Transocean follows similar complaints by U.S. lawmakers about difficulties obtaining necessary information from BP in their investigations.

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said they detected a plume of hydrocarbons in June that was at least 22 miles long and more than 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, a residue of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

According to the institution, the 1.2-mile-wide, 650-foot-high plume of trapped hydrocarbons provides at least a partial answer to recent questions asking where all the oil has gone as surface slicks shrink and disappear.

A 22-mile-long invisible mist of oil is meandering far below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, where it will probably loiter for months or more, scientists reported Thursday in the first conclusive evidence of an underwater plume from the BP spill.

The most worrisome part is the slow pace at which the oil is breaking down in the cold, 40-degree water, making it a long-lasting but unseen threat to vulnerable marine life, experts said.

Earlier this month, top federal officials declared the oil in the spill was mostly "gone," and it is gone in the sense you can't see it. But the chemical ingredients of the oil persist more than a half-mile beneath the surface, researchers found.

In a sternly worded letter to BP's attorneys, Transocean said the oil giant has in its sole possession information key to identifying the cause "of the tragic loss of eleven lives and the pollution in the Gulf of Mexico," and that the company's refusal to turn over the documents has hampered Transocean's investigation and hindered what it has been able to tell families of the deceased and state and federal investigators about the accident.

[F]ollowing an unexplained fish kill in St. Joseph’s Bay… Officials called the emergency meeting at the park to address concerns about rumors of large oil sheens sighted off St Joseph’s Bay, and whether there was any correlation with a fish kill in the same vicinity.

[D]ead fish and crabs began washing up along the shoreline by the hundreds. In addition, anonymous reports started coming in of a brown sludgy material sighted six miles offshore [Feds now say seaweed]…

As with all modern disasters, getting to the truth is not an easy task. First, people along the Gulf Coast were told that BP and the EPA had placed benzene monitors along the Alabama and Florida coasts, and that there was no indication of any VOCs. A senior reporter from WEAR-TV, an ABC affiliate in Pensacola, was unable to find any air-quality monitors in that area.

Several studies have found there is no threshold for carcinogenesis — that is, a level of benzene exposure at which lower levels are nontoxic. It appears that benzene is toxic at all levels and with chronic exposure — especially in people with certain genetic weaknesses — cancer is likely to develop.

Symptoms from VOCs are many times mistaken for other forms of illnesses, but generally they include headaches, dizziness, nausea, eye irritation, coughing, shortness of breath, nasal irritation, and multiple chemical sensitivity. Some of the gases have an odor, but others are odorless.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico poses direct threats to human health from inhalation or dermal contact with the oil and dispersant chemicals, and indirect threats to seafood safety and mental health. Physicians should be familiar with health effects from oil spills to appropriately advise, diagnose, and treat patients who live and work along the Gulf Coast or wherever a major oil spill occurs.